PDCA for Startup Strategy

PDCA for Startup Strategy. When I decided to launch my own personal business, I was of course not so expert in running personal business. I had to learn many things at the same time, but mainly I had to start learning and thinking how to approach my new potential customers.

My previous experience in automotive business taught me the mindset of proper planning and working using  a PDCA approach. My first steps were dedicated to properly plan how to launch my company. I began – as it should always be – from the training: I studied, took lessons and started specific qualification path that will support me in my new challenges. I than defined more hard task  such as searching for suppliers, furnitures and  preparing the budget (expanses and theoretical sales to reach the break even point). Once getting out these data, I focused on my potential customers, defining what could be my best strategy.

Following the planning, execution of strategy was based on answering these 3 important questions:

These may seem easy questions to ask, but drilling deep on those topics can really help you to execute your strategy at best! Thanks to these questions, I was able to define:

The how and the why we are doing something in business is the most intimate part: this is direclty connected with the our mission. It cannot be simply “for money”, as our customer will buy not only your products, but they will be interested in your brand, in your idea; in fact it means building a relation that will not be easily substituted (as it could be simply with your products).

The “Do phase” of my PDCA was the continuous improvements of all task I defined in my strategy:

Following the logic of the Ocean Strategy, I focused in trying offering something that was not present yet on the market, or in other words offering experiences that were somehow against shops and services already available in my area. Identifying my strength points, and putting my efforts to push some of those, helped me to increase what I defined as my core products/business (incremental innovation). Learning from mistake is clearly something you need to take in account when launching something new, so be prepared to fail but be as well prepared to learn from your failure!

My previous job in Quality department gave me the mindset of measuring and tracking all my actions in terms of effectiveness and efficacy!

It is something that started natural in my mind, to have daily records of sales, a warehouse management, a supplier evaluation, and to measure benefits after every investment (e.g. marketing). Measuring is not only related to income, but will give you a powerful tool to analyze how your business is running in a specific moment (weekly, monthly or yearly), and will help you to out in place better strategy for the future!

Once I defined which actions were most effective and were providing me more benefits, I tried to standardize them in order for me to be repetitive and to provide the best service for my customers! Standards are not so common in retail business, but there are very important to freeze what we are doing well and thus to improve.

I wasn’t really aware about the meaning of Lean Startup, but thanks to my industry experience, I simply tried to apply lean thinking and customer-oriented strategy to define the best offer for my new customers. PDCA is an approach that could be used for any kind of business, in every situation you may be. Continuously improving what we are doing for our customers,  working to be fast and lean on the market, and trying to be better tomorrow than what we were yesterday will be a good starting point for your new business!

Check my other article about “comfort zone” and my brand my startup!